Fallout 4 Guide: What to do with Junk

Fallout 4 finally makes all that junk you find in Bethesda games worth collecting. This is because it actually has a use this time around. We’ve already shown you what to do with resources in our comprehensive Workshop guide, we’ve also shown you where to find rarer resources like copper and circuitry, but what about all of that garbage that is littering the wasteland? Keep reading to see what to do with junk in Fallout 4.

Essentially you want to use the junk for its parts. If you look at an item in your Pip-Boy you should see what resources it will break down into. For example, a teddy bear might break down into some cloth, and a cooking pot will give you some steel and copper. All of these things will be useful when you go about building up your settlements, so you’ll want to gather a ton of junk to be used for this.

To actually break these items down you just want to go to the Workshop table, here you can select your inventory, go to the Junk category, and select the option to scrap the item (UPDATE: actually, just transfer the item over and it’ll be used for parts as needed). This will break it down to its base elements, giving you the resources to use. You can also store the junk here, or in any storage bin, but unless you’re using it to decorate, eventually you’ll want to break it all down into scrap.

This is for items found around the wasteland, but if the junk is already in your town you can scrap it much easier. Just load up the Workshop menu and find the item, hover over it and hit the button to scrap it, which is X on Xbox One. This will show you what it is going to break down into, which you can then confirm to send it to your Workshop storage.

One smaller use for junk is the Junk Jet. Found in a couple of places, including the basement of Arc Jet Systems, the Junk Jet lets you load up and fire any piece of junk you find. It can get cumbersome, as having to tote around the gun and various junk is pretty heavy, but still a lot of fun to watch a Feral Ghould have his head blown off by a teddy bear.